The Beijing Municipality has added two more top city hospitals to the list of facilities that will treat only patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
The two hospitals -- the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital and Beijing Xuanwu Hospital -- along with nine other hospitals, have been added to the original six designated SARS hospitals.
The 700 non-SARS patients at Xuanwu hospital will all be transferred to other facilities on Tuesday and Wednesday, hospital official Chu Xiaoming said.
The hospital will then be remodeled and outfitted with special medical equipment, while its staff will receive special training on the disease, Chu said.
This Saturday, SARS patients will be sent to Xuanwu hospital which will then be cordoned off, refusing admission to patients without atypical pneumonia, Chu added.
Meanwhile, 1,200 medical workers with army hospitals have been assigned to help Beijing set up more designated hospitals to receive confirmed SARS patients.
The first batch of 333 physicians and nurses has now arrived at the Xiaotangshan Hospital. They are from the military commands of Beijing, Shenyang and Jinan, as well as the General Logistics Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
The Beijing municipal government has received donations of over 57.33 million yuan (US$6.9 million) and medicine worth 14.8 million yuan (US$1.8 million) from the public.
In another development, a hotline for psychological counseling of those affected by the SARS epidemic was opened on Monday by Peking University.
The hotline numbers are 62091943 and 62017114. It operates from 8 am to 8 pm.
Meanwhile, the provincial government of Central China's Hubei Province has declared that all levels of government will pay the medical fees of confirmed and suspected SARS patients.
A special fund of 20 million yuan (US$2.4 million) has been established by the provincial government.
Local officials and urban residents in Hangzhou, the picturesque capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, are visiting residents who have been quarantined as part of the city-wide efforts to contain SARS.
Expressions of support have overwhelmed residents in buildings quarantined in Hangzhou, where three SARS cases have been confirmed.
"The sacrifices you have made in the fight against SARS heighten our optimism that we can overcome all difficulties,'' the Municipal Party Secretary Wang Guoping said in an on-line message to those living in the quarantined building.
(China Daily April 29, 2003)
